Medema, Steven wrote:
>to study the history of economic thought for its own sake, as a 
>branch of intellectual history or the history of science. I simply 
>cannot accept so narrow a definition of the legitimate province of 
>the historian of economics.

Steven, I wonder why Roy and you invoke the "god" of science to back 
up your opinions. I would argue that Roy's admonition not only 
suggests too narrow a definition of economics, it is ultimately meaningless.

If I understand you correctly, you say that you approve of the study 
of the history of economic thought because the thoughts of the past 
may be relevant to the thinking of the future. "We" educate modern 
economists by helping them learn that they can often find ideas that 
are relevant to their working out of current problems by studying the 
communications of past economists. I agree.

But you also say that you approve of the study history in order to 
"understand the present without passing judgment." I am not sure that 
I agree here because I don't know what you mean by passing judgment. 
Are you referring to a judgment about the  writers about the 
present?" Are you referring to a judgment on whether the present is 
good or bad? Your remark seems to be based on the notion that 
historians of economics can or should study "what is" and not "what 
ought to be." Yet I would argue that economists, by definition, have 
always studied what "ought to be."

First, they have studied what ought to be because of its close 
proximity to what "might otherwise be." In order to form hypotheses 
about what "is," we must also form hypotheses about "what might 
otherwise be." There is not much distance between studying this and 
studying what "ought to be." Economists have often studied what 
"ought to be" by failing to clearly maintain the distinction.

More importantly, I would argue that the history of economics is the 
history of the study of ideas that are relevant to the achievement of 
the goals of the classical economists -- to identify how the people 
in a society can attain maximum benefits through the division of 
labor and specialization. If this is so, then the distinction between 
"what might otherwise be," and "what ought to be" seems to evaporate.

If one accepts my definition, then to incorporate the history of 
economics into the broader class of the "history of science" would 
seem to require a redefinition of what most people call science.

For those who care, I regard my definition of economics as Misesian.
http://www.nomadpress.com/gunning/subjecti/workpape/misscmet.pdf


Pat Gunning